AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Mom in the Garden

Chantee Fisher

Gardening with Children

If you don't mind, bow your heads for a word of prayer as we get started here.

Precious Heavenly Father, thank you for this new day, for this opportunity to be in this place, fellowshipping, learning from 1 another.

I pray that you will bless this presentation and may the lessons you've been teaching, Luke and I, be a blessing to those who are here.

So I have to tell you, very frankly, that when Vivian Seiler contacted me about teaching this class, I said, I told her, that sounds like a really great class title.

I do not think that I am qualified to teach that class.

But she encouraged me to pray about it, and I prayed about it, and here I am.

So I'm not here as an expert to share with you exactly how to garden with children, the perfect blueprint.

But I am here to share with you our journey as we're learning and as we're growing.

We found some things that work, we found things that don't work very well, and I feel like, I'm just going to share with you frankly from my testimony and experience.

I'm going to start off with a quote from Adventist Home that has really blessed me and inspired me in this area.

It says, let each of your children have a piece of ground of their own and as You teach them how to make a garden, how to prepare the soil for seed, and the importance of keeping all the weeds pulled out.

Teach them also how important it is to keep unsightly, injurious practices out of the life.

Teach them to keep down wrong habits as They keep down the weeds in their gardens.

It will take time to teach these lessons, but it will pay, greatly pay.

We want our children's characters to be developed in the likeness of God, And the garden is a wonderful place to start teaching those lessons.

So I'll tell you a little bit about ourselves.

Our family quite literally lives in the garden.

Gardening is not just an event of our day, a 1 hour time on the schedule.

And so we have had to find ways to make our life work in the garden.

You can see this picture here is of our oldest.

I think he was about 3 weeks old here when we really took him out to the garden.

Well, we took him out to the garden right at the beginning.

But when we first had our first family work day in the garden after he was born, I was feeling up to working again.

And it was spring, the weather was really nice.

We wrapped him up in 1 of his daddy's sweaters and put him under a cabbage leaf, and he just slept there peacefully as newborns do as we were working in the garden.

And I feel like that was the beginning of our children's journey in the garden.

Living, growing, eating, experiencing all kinds of things out there in the garden.

So we spent the first 5 years of our marriage market gardening in the spring and summer.

And then in the fall and winter, we volunteered in the Congo.

And it was just a really, really great experience.

We were growing a family, but we still had few enough children that we could kind of put them in the backpack and just keep on going.

And then we went, we accepted a full-time overseas service, and we were there for 2 years, and so we kind of took a break from gardening during that time.

And when we came back to start up gardening again, we had 4 children.

And I'll tell you, you definitely have to juggle things differently when you have 4 children rather than 2.

There's not enough backpacks to go around anymore.

As we were finishing up our stint overseas, we had actually been in a more challenging environment.

We had been living in town, and it was the first time I had lived in town since I was a child, the first time my children ever lived in town.

We had a yard, and we grew a little patio garden.

But at the end of that time, we really felt the need to just get back in nature, really deeply connect with God as a family, spending lots and lots of time outside.

So as we were evaluating what that would look like for our family, we decided our priorities were spending time in nature, working on the character development of our children at what we felt like was a critical stage for them.

And We wanted to take the opportunity before we started the official homeschool journey to really strengthen the practical virtues in them.

So we wanted to teach them the first lessons in hard work and resourcefulness and fortitude.

We'd been saving to build a house, but we didn't have enough money yet, and so we were like, okay, we didn't wanna rent, because renting, typically, in our area at least, means living in or right near a town.

We wanted to be on the farm, but there was no housing for us on the farm.

It was supposed to be just a very temporary thing.

We were going to live in it for the spring and summer and start working on building in the fall.

And we've been in the tent now for 2 years.

We have been able to meet a lot of our goals, which is a real blessing.

We started building now, but building is a real process.

But I'll tell you, there's been all kinds of lessons that I never anticipated learning.

I never anticipated how difficult the experience would be for me, frankly.

So that helps, because they just think life is 1 grand adventure.

But as a mother with 4 little ones, it's not always easy.

When you come home after a day in the garden, and you know, it's cold, and the wood is wet, so the fire's not starting very well, and the generator's out of gas, so I can't do the laundry, and the water pipes are frozen, so we can't even take a shower.

It's like I feel like, why am I dealing with these very fundamental problems?

I mean, I have enough on my plate that I should be able to just turn on the sink and have water come out.

But I have been encouraged, there's a quote, I think, I actually was looking it up this morning in my devotions, that has really inspired me in this journey.

This is from the book, Christian Experience and Teachings of Ellen White.

And this is her commentary on her vision of walking the narrow path, the allegory of the journey to heaven.

And she says, we thought then of those, this is where the road is getting so narrow that they've actually had to take their shoes off and they're just walking in stockings.

We then thought of those who had not accustomed themselves to privations and hardships.

At every change, some were left behind, and those only remained who had accustomed themselves to endure hardships.

The privations of the way only made these more eager to press on to the end.

You know, in our country today, I know we all face hardships in our lives, but in a physical sense, usually, hardships and privations are not something that we really experience.

And so as I've gone through the experience of the last couple of years, I've realized that God is using these lessons in my life to prepare me for the days ahead and to make me a fit teacher for my children as I'm seeking to prepare their characters for eternity.

We are still learning and growing in how to manage keeping our children a priority while we are running a full-time market gardening business.

And like I said, that's a journey that we're still on.

But I'm going to share with you practical ways that we have made the garden a place that our children love.

It's a place of discovery and a place of joy to them.

So first of all, I would say the most important thing is my attitude.

It makes all the difference in the world.

If I am excited about the work that we're doing out there in the garden, if I'm enthusiastic about it, and if I exude that attitude to my children, they pick up on that, they copy that attitude.

Even if they're in a grumpy mood when we're heading out there, if I maintain that cheerful, excited attitude, it totally rubs off on them.

I mean, there's some things in the garden that I don't enjoy doing.

I love starting the seeds in the spring, early spring, late winter in the greenhouse.

Series

Mom in the Garden

Gardening with Children

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

True Education

Intentional Education

42m

God's First Book, Our First Classroom

2. Teaching Science & Math in the Outdoors

1h 4m

Special Interests

The Sabbatical – Binding Burden or Bountiful Blessing?

56m

Connect

03 Connection Through Community

26m

Plenary

Country Living Forum

1h 53m

God's First Book, Our First Classroom

4. Take Your Family Outdoors

1h 5m

Better Together – Intentional Family Connections

04 Adventure Outdoors

58m

SWYC 2012: Question and Answers

SWYC 2012: Question and Answers, Part 2

54m

Homesteading Track

Three Keys to Successful Homesteading

48m

Better Together – Intentional Family Connections

03 The Nature Connection

58m

Intensive: Outdoor Education

Outdoor Education - Part 6

55m

Sound Doctrine